Not sure if everyone's playing dumb on this one.... the printing problem was the most critical flaw in Web Direct! There has been tons written and posted about this problem all over the web. I don't know anyone that has been able to effectively use Web Direct due to the fact that you cannot print reports. You can only "screen print" which is worthless. If this problem is still not fixed, then there is no reason to update to 15 in my opinion.

It's not a matter of "playing dumb". The original message implies there was a "problem", i.e. BUG, of some kind with printing in WebDirect. What your really asking is did they add a new FEATURE to allow printing in WebDirect, and the answer is a resounding and disappointed NO.

That said, I believe there things going on in FM15 under the hood (like a new PDF engine), that may be a pre-cursor to such a feature finally coming. I agree, it is a big missing component, especially with the price increases. Just keep up friendly pressure on FMI to let them know this is important to you. Also go to the new feature requests page and vote for the requests that have already been posted related to this feature, and or create your own.

Not sure if everyone's playing dumb on this one.... the printing problem was the most critical flaw in Web Direct! There has been tons written and posted about this problem all over the web. I don't know anyone that has been able to effectively use Web Direct due to the fact that you cannot print reports. You can only "screen print" which is worthless. If this problem is still not fixed, then there is no reason to update to 15 in my opinion.

Be kind to the other people here.

Not everyone needs printing to make WebDirect work. But yes, it would be nice it the printing could be solved by generating PDFs that the user can download.

Um, you know that it's HTML, don't you, Saltaras? NO ONE has a way to print a web page as anything coherent. All the time when I go to a site and I want to print ANYTHING that won't fit on one screen, the site will generate a PDF and either send it to me or download it. THAT is the solution. PRINTING a web page is never a good option.

As Wim says (correctly, as always), it would be nice to have a simple, straightforward, native way to generate those PDFs, but "printing a report from WebDirect" is never going to happen.

Sure it violates the "it's just like FileMaker on the desktop" meme, but wasn't that always just a bit high of an expectation for a web page?

So, did you find out what their magic sauce was? If they don't tell you then it is not safe to assume that it is simple web technology that they've figured out.

I wonder why, out of all the websites that I deal with (as a consumer), not one has a print that works with on-screen presentation. All of them either switch you to a reformatted layout that can be printed as seen on the screen, send me a printable email, send me a PDF, or immediately download a PDF. Not one I have run into can "print" a report as needed.

That just led me to believe that that is not something that HTML can really do. Does HTML have a way to figure out what your printer is capable of and format the pages that way? I'm still leaning toward believing that the issue of webD printing is way more an issue of html limitations than FileMaker's incompetence, or even misplaced priorities.

Thanks for the responses everyone. It seems like there should be a way, but I am not a programmer and I realize that this is not a "bug". Filemaker is still a great product. How does Google do printing so well though? We use google docs for everything from writer to spreadsheets and can print perfect forms from any computer or iPad etc. So there must be a way.

Saltaras wrote: Not sure if everyone's playing dumb on this one.... the printing problem was the most critical flaw in Web Direct! There has been tons written and posted about this problem all over the web. I don't know anyone that has been able to effectively use Web Direct due to the fact that you cannot print reports. You can only "screen print" which is worthless. If this problem is still not fixed, then there is no reason to update to 15 in my opinion.

Be kind to the other people here.Not everyone needs printing to make WebDirect work. But yes, it would be nice it the printing could be solved by generating PDFs that the user can download.

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As you have seen there is no native way to print from WD. However, I used a robot computer and Troi Activator to setup 'printing' on demand. It actually creates a PDF which is loaded into a container field for the user to download.

It doesn't eat a connection but you do need a FM Pro license for the robot. The server version of the Troi Activator is only $299.

This is only for on demand printing, if the user can wait for the output then you don't need the plugin. You can just put the robot in a loop to check for new records every 5 minutes. In the solution I did the tutors needed to get their report in a few seconds. So the plugin was a better solution.